SocialGrapple Acquired by Google

Google has acquired the team behind SocialGrapple, a social analytics service. A message at SocialGrapple.com says:

I am excited to announce that the SocialGrapple team is joining Google.

SocialGrapple started a year ago, and launched only a couple of months later as a social graph analytics service. It was an amazing learning experience and I am incredibly grateful to all the users who supported this venture. Much of what was built over the months came directly from your needs and requests, so I feel like we were all on this journey together.

Since the first launch, we also explored keyword tracking and branched out to other social networks, but this was only scratching the surface. I’m looking forward to taking these ideas to the next level and revealing metrics on an incredibly larger scale.

Thank you again for being a part of my journey. I strive to continue building tools that make the world more transparent and empowered, and I can’t imagine a better partner than Google.

According to Leen Rao, it's just a talent acquisition. It's unclear whether or not the product itself will remain available. Dain Binder, who first reported the news, says Google confirmed that creator Andrey Petrov is joining Google, but was "silent about whether or not any assets or property of SocialGrapple" are part of the acquisition.